Her First Mistake
by restive nature
Summary: BtVSDA. The fury of Faith.
1. Chapter 1

Title: Her First Mistake

Author: Restive Nature (aka Bavite)

Rating: PG13 for violence and swearing

Disclaimer: I do not own Buffy The Vampire Slayer characters, nor do I own characters or settings from Dark Angel. They belong respectively to Joss Whedon and Cameron/ Eglee.

Timeline: Post series for Buffy and late season 2 for DA, after the episode "The Berrisford Agenda".

Pairing: Faith/ Alec, though not in the way you'd expect.

Summary: The fury of Faith.

A/N- I was reading over at the TtH forums that Joss Whedon had finally (post series), decided on a surname for Faith. When I read what it was, this fiction popped into my head and wouldn't go away.

Logan Cale cautiously stuck his head in the door. As the mysterious Eyes Only, he had plenty of opportunity to deal with and champion the causes of the underdog. He stood up for the masses of people that couldn't defend themselves. But ever since the transgenic being that he knew as Max had entered his life and begun working with him, he didn't get much chance to be one on one with those teeming masses. And as such, he wasn't quite sure how to deal with this situation.

The thoughts of what had led up to the problem they had encountered certainly weren't the likes of which that Logan was used to dealing with. His life as Eyes Only was more concerned with digging up dirt on scumbags and exposing their operations so that the little people weren't the ones to suffer for it.

And looking in now at the bedroom where Max's pseudo sibling lay, his chest bandaged heavily, while the transgenic male labored for breath, Logan wondered if maybe the transgenic cause he was championing needed more than someone speaking the truth about them. Maybe, just as human beings did, all they needed was someone to just listen.

His musings were cut off when Alec's eyes popped open. Logan hid a smile. Even as damaged as Alec was, his training and instincts were still going as strong as ever. Maybe they were in hyper drive. But another thought popped into his mind. Sometimes a predator was at its most dangerous when it was injured and cornered.

He just hoped that Alec would remember where he was. At Joshua's house, a transhuman male whose DNA had been mixed with canine, Alec should have been safe. And from the slight relaxation of Alec's tense features, Logan knew that the conscious self was slowly letting that information filter in. It was just too bad that his instincts hadn't been fully on that fateful night, just days ago.

"Hey Logan buddy," Alec rasped out. The damage to his lungs had been bad. A normal human probably wouldn't have survived. Especially since Max and Logan hadn't been able to take Alec to an emergency room, for fear of exposure. They'd done the best they could and relied on Logan's surgeon friend, Dr. Sam Carr to do the rest. But as Dr. Carr said, having a lung punctured by a wooden implement wasn't something even a transgenic could get over in a day.

"Hey Alec," Logan returned quietly. The newspaper and file folder that he held in his hand rustled slightly and he glanced down. Logan wondered now if this really was the right time to talk to Alec about this. But as Max had pointed out, Alec had been trying to put this mess behind him. And this information might go a way in helping him do that.

Alec smiled his typical cocky grin. Ii was marred only by the fact that it was immediately followed by a small spate of coughing that left the transgenic male clutching his chest, wincing in extreme pain. Logan hurried forward, as quickly as his mechanically assisted legs would allow him. All three of them, Max, Joshua and himself had quickly learned that Alec needed to sit up during and after an episode like this.

After the moment had passed and Alec was propped up against the mountain of pillows that his concerned host had provided him, he gestured to the papers in Logan's hand. "What's up?" he whispered.

Logan stared down at the pages, wondering how to phrase this in the least exciting way he could think of. It wouldn't do to get the patient worked up. "I came across this article this morning," he started, gesturing with the newspaper. "The name caught my eye, so I did a search."

"And…" Alec said the word slowly. It seemed to Logan that the other man could sense what was coming. Logan handed the file folder over to him, opening it. He ignored the brief flash of annoyance that Alec directed at him. He knew, as well as any other, just how independent transgenics were. But he also knew how difficult a debilitating injury could be. Just look at his own severed spinal cord injury he'd endured over a year prior.

Forgetting his own annoyance, Alec's eyes flicked over the single sheet of paper in the folder. His eyebrow went up at the poor copy of a driver's license. But the picture was enough information. He nodded.

"That was her," he muttered. It was really hard to forget the woman that almost killed you.

"I thought so," Logan agreed mildly, then shrugged. "I wasn't sure, since I only saw her for a second."

"So who is she?" Alec asked, looking thoughtfully at the newspaper.

Logan unfolded the paper. He'd already arranged the newspaper to the section that pertained to their interest. With one last calculating glance at the injured man, Logan gauged that it was time for Alec to lay this whole thing to rest.

There was no outburst as he read the obituary. Logan just didn't know Alec well enough to read the more subtle shifts of his eyes and face when he was taken off guard in this way. The only clue Logan had as to the intensity of the pain this caused the young adult was a softly muttered curse.

"Fuck."


	2. Chapter 2

Title: Her First Mistake

Author: Restive Nature (aka Bavite)

Rating: PG13 for violence and swearing

Disclaimer: I do not own Buffy The Vampire Slayer characters, nor do I own characters or settings from Dark Angel. They belong respectively to Joss Whedon and Cameron/ Eglee.

Timeline: Post series for Buffy and late season 2 for DA, after the episode "The Berrisford Agenda".

Pairing: Faith/ Alec, though not in the way you'd expect.

Summary: The fury of Faith.

_6 months earlier_

_His eyes had been green._

_His father's name was Jack._

_She had wanted to call him Matthew._

_But that hadn't been her right._

Faith's eyes darted around the room as these thoughts flitted through her mind. They came fast and furious and she was shaking before she realized it. The telephone in her hand banged against her chin as the room began to swim.

"Ma'am?" came the disembodied voice through the telephone. The voice that had identified itself as Detective Allen Stewart, from the Seattle Police Department, sounded slightly worried, mostly resigned. Faith realized that this guy must have to do this a lot. It probably wasn't the best part of his job.

Faith tried to speak. She tried to reassure the detective that she was still there. It wasn't until she felt the chilled hand of her best friend; some would say her only true friend, slide over her shoulder in a gesture of comfort.

"Faith?" Angel asked quietly. He'd given her a measure of privacy by moving to the other room in his apartment, but some innate sense of trouble had brought him back to her side.

Faith glanced up at the ensoulled Vampire. She was so completely out of her element right then, but somehow, having Angel by her side helped. She knew that she could figure this out if he was there to help. Just like always. She moistened her lips and returned her attention to the phone call.

"Yeah," she murmured. "I'm here."

"I'm very sorry for your loss ma'am," Detective Stewart continued, speaking slowly, in a soft, calculated way and Faith felt a surge of anger. She'd always hated in when people had talked down to her. And right now, the distrust she felt when she heard that tone in people's voice was intensified.

"Are you sure it was him?" she demanded, her voice tight with tension. There was a slight pause as the detective gathered his thoughts.

"As sure as we can be, ma'am," he offered. "He was initially tentatively identified by a neighbor that lived in the same apartment building as he. This lady was the one that reported him missing. She recognized the ring that he wore. She said it was new."

"But she could have been mistaken," Faith insisted. Her mind flashed to the silver ring she'd sent to him for his last birthday. Somehow though, she knew that what the detective was saying had to be true. It had been too long since Faith had talked to him. They'd never let more than six months pass by without checking in with each other. Faith never imagined that the messages she'd sent to his email address hadn't even been read.

"We thought so too ma'am," Det. Stewart agreed. "That's why we ran the DNA. The match was completely positive."

Faith felt dizzy again. Her free hand stole up to rub at her brow. This shouldn't have been happening. Right now, she should be on the phone with _him_, laughing and talking about her misadventures in Australia, where she'd been stranded after a demon had destroyed her land cruiser, leaving her in the middle of a desert with little water and barely any food.

But no, now she was talking to a police detective who worked in the unsolved murders division.

"You're sure?" she demanded again, softly, yearningly. There had to be some mistake. Somewhere along the line, if one little thing had been different… something someone said, or something someone did… then everything would have been okay.

"Yes Ms. Lehane," the detective answered decisively again. "Your son Simon was murdered."


	3. Chapter 3

Title: Her First Mistake

Author: Restive Nature (aka Bavite)

Rating: PG13 for violence and swearing

Disclaimer: I do not own Buffy The Vampire Slayer characters, nor do I own characters or settings from Dark Angel. They belong respectively to Joss Whedon and Cameron/ Eglee.

Timeline: Post series for Buffy and late season 2 for DA, after the episode "The Berrisford Agenda".

Pairing: Faith/ Alec, though not in the way you'd expect.

Summary: The fury of Faith.

"Do you want to talk about it?" the voice startled Faith slightly and her eyes jerked up convulsively to the rearview mirror. The curse she muttered under her breath did not go unnoticed by the Vampire huddling under heavy woolen blankets in the backseat of Faith's beat up old car.

She rolled her eyes and returned her attention to where it belonged. To the long stretch of highway before them. She sighed, forcing herself not to start playing with her hair. She knew that while she couldn't see Angel's reflection in any of the vehicles mirrors, he could certainly see hers. And he already seemed to be worried enough as it was.

He hadn't uttered any protests when she'd hung up the phone hours earlier and informed him that she was heading out again. They'd known each other far too long, fighting the forces of evil in Los Angeles for the majority of that time, to waste time arguing. He'd simply disappeared into his room and returned quickly with his own bag packed.

Faith had protested. But Angel was unrelenting. He had known instantly that the phone call she'd received was not supernatural related. And as he'd promised so many years before, he would be there for her, to help her through whatever trials she had to face. And Angel had the feeling that this was the big one. Reading the sudden lines that appeared on Faith's face, maybe she sensed it too.

Faith realized that Angel would only find a way to follow her to Seattle, so she allowed him to tag along. He'd given her four hours of silence. But now that the sun was drooping below the horizon, the nocturnal dead man was almost free to play the twenty questions he was bursting with.

She took a little time to try and find an answer that would satisfy him and yet, at the same time, give as little information as possible. Her son Simon was just not a topic she could discuss. He was a secret long kept. The only sacrosanct thing in her world. She did realize morosely that all the reasons she had once had for never mentioning him were gone, now that he was dead. Her silence on the matter was no longer required. She sighed again and glanced into the backseat. Angel, as expected was still huddled under the blanket, but his eyes, his dark brown eyes that seemed to see right through her were boring in on her as if magnetically drawn.

"We're going to Seattle," she shrugged, deciding that it was time. She'd never ignored her son's presence to dishonor him or what she'd had at one time with his father. She'd held her tongue on the advice of her Watcher. But she was dead. Jack was dead. And now Simon too.

Angel, to his credit, did not scoff or roll his eyes or do any of the many things that he could have to show his exasperation at being told information he already knew. He simply waited patiently to see if Faith would continue.

"That phone call was from the cops," she continued after a moment. Angel simply watched, noticing that the hands that usually rested casually on the steering wheel were now clenching and unclenching convulsively. The only time he'd ever seen Faith's hands do that, were when she was about to enter a fight that she wasn't one hundred percent sure that she could win. And since Faith was headstrong and believed in the power she wielded, that meant that Angel very rarely saw that side of her.

Faith's eyes glanced up to the rearview mirror again, reflexively. It was hard to break a subconscious habit, even when one knew that there was no reason for it. At least on this occasion. She wondered how Angel would take this. Of course, knowing him as she had come to do in the last fifteen years, she knew he'd be patient, understanding and calm. After all, it had nothing to do with Buffy Summers, a Slayer that had preceded Faith and who was still the love of Angel's soul and being.

"They called to let me know that… that my son is dead," despite her attempt not to, the last words came out as a sob. Faith's lower lip trembled as she quickly wiped the sudden mess of tears from the corners of her eyes. She chanced another glance over her shoulder. As she thought he would, Angel sat impassively, watching her. There was the gleam of sympathy in his eyes and that inquisitive look that was inviting her to tell him the rest of the story.

She turned her eyes back to the road, one hand removing from the steering wheel as she reached down to the console between the seats, searching for the pack of cigarettes she'd stowed there earlier. Once she found them, she shook one loose and brought it to her dry lips. Her hand repeated the motion, this time intent on a lighter. Once found, she lit the cigarette and took a deep drag. She exhaled slowly, feeling the burn of the smoke along her throat and in her mouth. The smoke curled and dashed against the inside of the windshield. And though it momentarily blurred the road for Faith, she felt as if everything had come into sharp focus.

"I was fourteen when I met Jack," she began softly, not bothering to look at Angel again. She knew he'd be all ears. "I believed him when he said he loved me. Maybe he did right then, I don't know." She paused for another draw off the cigarette.

"Every one of you always thought that I'd had a bad rap growin' up," she continued, smiling faintly. She shrugged. "In a way I did. My dad left before I was born. My mom was a drunk." A brief grimace crossed Faith's face. "She beat the crap outta me a few times." The grimace faded as Faith recalled the mental image of the child she'd been. "I knew what my mom was. A whore. A drunk. Good for nothing. I heard it all my life." Her eyes flickered upward, momentarily. "But I was a good kid Angel."

"I'm sure you were," he murmured. Faith shook her head. She could see that he wasn't sure, that he was weighing her words carefully, gauging what he remembered of their first meetings. The hell child that she'd been when she'd fist arrived in Sunnydale, the bitch she'd been in LA and later. Right up to now, with her sarcastic ways and overt sexuality. Yeah she still had that.

"No," she protested softly. "I really was. When I was little I didn't understand. But when the other kids made it clear to me that they considered themselves above me, better than me because of what my mom was, well…"

"You were determined to be better than that?" Angel demanded, understanding dawning. Faith nodded. She took another drag.

"And I was, for a while," she let out a huff of breath and licked her lower lip. She rubbed the thumb of her free hand against her temple. "But it's a lonely life, ya know? No friends. A mother who is constantly shittin' on everything you say or do."

"And that's when Jack came into the picture?"

"Got it in one," Faith chuckled humorlessly. "Don't laugh," she warned and even she didn't know if she was playful or serious. Perhaps a little of both. "But we met at the library." She waited and could feel more than see or hear the chuckle that Angel tried to hide.

"Really?" was his muffled reply. Faith shook her head. Yeah it was kind of funny, thinking of her at a public library. But that was her now. Way back then, it made sense.

"Anyway," she continued, stressing the word to bring Angel out of his laughing jag. "We started going out. I was impressed and flattered. I mean here was a guy that didn't care that my mom was the town carnival, that liked the same stuff I did. When I was with him, people weren't talkin' about me behind my back. They were polite, at least. I'd never had that before."

"Let me guess." Angel interrupted, slightly sarcastic. "You were so impressed that you gave it up to him, only to find out that he never cared all along and was just after you for one thing and after he got it he left. Leaving you alone and pregnant."

"Look at you brainiac," Faith snapped back. The memory of the last time she'd seen Jack was no picnic and it was that pain reaching forward to pierce her heart anew that made her reply harsher than she had meant. But Angel, who knew her well, understood that on some level. He nodded, accepting what she wasn't saying. And Faith relaxed a little. "That was about it."

"And then?" Angel asked, knowing that it wasn't the end yet.

"Simon was born when I was fifteen," Faith continued. But she stopped again as Angel snorted. "What?"

"Sorry," he mumbled. "It's just… I can't really see you naming a kid Simon."

Faith grinned up into the mirror. "Yeah. That wouldn't have been on my top one hundred." She paused a moment, fiddling with the almost burnt out cigarette. She crushed it into the ashtray before replying. "That's what his adoptive parents named him. When I had him, there was a nurse there who called social services for me."

"Did you ask her to?"

Faith shook her head. "I think she saw enough of that shit. Young girls with no money, no where to go. No way of handling a kid."

"Especially when they're just kids themselves."

"Yeah." There was a long pause before Faith continued the thread of her story. "So anyway, a lady from social services came and talked to me about giving the baby up for adoption. It made sense. But I didn't realize until later what I'd done, signing those open adoption papers." Faith shook herself slightly her free hand drifting up to her temple again. "And that's when _she_ found me."

"Your Watcher?" Angel asked, knowing that this was another sensitive subject, though not as much as this one was.

"The day after they met me and then took Simon away, this other lady shows up," Faith mused. "Tellin' me all this crap about monsters and demons and Vampires that walk the night. That I was supposed to be the Slayer that defeated them all."

"Yet you took to it like a duck to water," Angel pointed out.

"Yeah, well I needed something to believe in," Faith growled. There was silence as Angel thought over what he'd just heard, comparing it to what he knew of Faith's past.

"That's why you dropped your last name, wasn't it?" he demanded softly, putting the pieces together.

"What?" Faith demanded, her eyes jumping up again to see the strange sight of a bundle of blankets sitting upright on their own. The sun had set and she hadn't even noticed.

"You said you signed open adoption papers," Angel clarified. "You mean the kind where all of your information is open to the adoptive parents and the kid in case they want to contact you down the road, right?"

"Yeah. Exactly," Faith grimaced.

"So why did you drop your last name?" Angel asked, though he had an inkling why.

"When my Watcher told me about the Slayer heritage, all that crap about bein' alone…" Faith began heavily. But Angel finished for her.

"You wanted to make sure that Simon couldn't be found or in any way associated with you." Faith didn't need to nod her head to confirm his theory. It was right on the money. "You wanted to keep your son safe." Angel's voice was as heavy as Faith's heart. He knew only too well the sacrifice's a parent made for their child.

"But how did you find him again?" Angel asked eventually.

"They found me," Faith replied. "It was after the pulse. I was in Boston again." Angel remembered well the reluctant trip she'd made. She had told him that she needed to deal with a big bad there. He'd had his suspicions at the time that the big bad was more her past demons than any corporeal threat. Now he knew he was right. "My mom died and I went back to take care of her stuff." Perturbed at the thought of the woman that had borne her, Faith convulsively searched out another cigarette.

"While I was goin' through he crap I found these letters," she explained, talking through the cigarette dangling from her lips, unlit. "It was from Si's mom."

"Why did they send them to your mom?" Angel asked, puzzled.

"I put that address down on the adoption sheets," Faith shrugged. "I wasn't entirely ready to have my life be an open book. At the time, I figured I would go back there to recover. My mom may have been a bitch, but I always had a bed to sleep on in that house."

"Funny how life turns out," Angle commented mildly. "So what happened then?"

"I went up to Seattle," Faith murmured. Angel recalled that she'd been gone way longer on that trip than she'd told him she would be. "I just wanted to se him," she explained hastily. "I wasn't gonna interfere. I just wanted to…"

"To make sure he was okay?"

"Yeah," she nodded. "And he was. He was so… beautiful." She swiveled her head slightly. "It was painful. It… hurt so much to see him so happy and know that I could never put a smile like that on his face."

"But you did," Angel pointed out quickly. "Just think. If you'd kept him with you, the kind of life he would have had. Look at Robin." He tensed a moment. Mentioning Robin Woods, son of long dead Slayer Nikki Woods was another sore point with Faith. Their relationship had lasted longer than most of hers, but it still had ended.

"Yeah," Faith conceded. "I suppose." She paused to consider what she remembered of Robin talking about his early years when his mother had still been alive and the active Slayer. "I don't know if I could have pulled it off like she did," she admitted softly. "Maybe giving Si up was for the best when it came to the Slayin' gig."

Silence fell and it was a long time until conversation arose again. This time of mundane things. Where to stop for gas and food. To drive all night or not. The topic of Faith's son was not broached again until they reached Seattle.


End file.
